Wednesday, May 13, 2015

This guide to the Egyptian museum in Cairo is a nice size to carry around the museum and a jewel box of colorful pictures which include some of the finest works of Egyptian art created. The introduction is by Dr. Zahi Hawass complete with very nice images of Egypt's first national museum founded in the Boulaq neighborhood of nineteenth-century Cairo. The Boulaq Museum was prone to flooding added to the fast growing size of the collection necessitated its move to a new home in Tahrir square in 1902.

The guide contains lots of useful information to visitors of the museum including maps and other practical notes, advice, and chronology. As the visitor enters the museum they will come upon room 43 which the guide gives the reader a description of Egypt's Predynastic period including the unifying of Upper and Lower Egypt and into its Archaic period of Dynasties I, and II, leading to the Old Kingdom beginning with the famous palette of Narmer of Dynasty 0.

The first unusual things that caught my eye are four necklaces from the Thinite period of Dynasty I and II. Three of the necklaces were found by Z. Saad at Helluan in 1942 and the last in 1945. One of the necklaces, a faience choker with a pendant of a falcon on a boat having been found on the neck of a First Dynasty mummy. The guide is of course packed with many of the collections most famous pieces but with a considerable many more like the previously mentioned necklaces being unknown to me.

A parade of minimally dressed officials of the Old Kingdom, their servants, and their rulers pass often in excellent states of preservation. The men wear a short skirt or loincloth and perhaps some jewelry, while the women wear tight sheer fitting dresses with or without the breasts covered completed with accessories.

In room 41 can be found some fragments from the Fourth Dynasty Mastaba tomb of Prince Nofermaat at Maydum. Unique in its technique of inlaying colored paste into its limestone carved scenes produced immensely beautiful works of art that unfortunately had the fault of after the paste elements dried out they proceeded to fall out of the limestone intaglio.

The reader is next on to the Middle Kingdom dominated by Theban rulers of Dynasty XII who moved their capital to the Fayum. This is ancient Egypt's 'Classical Period' in which the arts excelled and in some cases were never to be improved upon with particular importance in the thoughtful and reflective literature of the age. My favorite sculpture of the age is likely a black granite bust of Amenenhat III wearing the wig of a priest. One of a number of unique and stunning depictions of this late Middle Kingdom ruler that are to be found in room 16.

The guide is fast moving with lots of provenances given to the objects on its pages. Unfortunately for me, I am a lover of mummies and so far there are no mummies. The authors present a short rundown of the New Kingdom representing a number of attractive and colorful stela of minor officials followed by statuary of high officials and royalty located in room 12. The 1906 accidental discovery at Deir el Bahri of a shrine and statue dedicated to the cow goddess Hathor brought to light a monument in an outstanding state of preservation can also be found in the same room.

As I get deeper into the guide the words and pictures vanish into the crevice of the book requiring the spine to be broken apart to catch those details. The famous Amarna period material kept in room 3 contains an image of a young girl eating a duck. This is such a rare depiction in thousands of years of ancient Egyptian art executed by a talented hand. So many masterpieces it is hard to choose but a less well-known relief in the museum of a block representing prisoners being grabbed by the hair in a classic smiting scene is among the finest of such cheery scenes and a great work of art that can be found in room 14.

As I continue reading on into the Late period I am impressed by the huge number of sculptures and stelas in the guide from the court of the cachette deposit of statuary found by George Legrain at Karnak the beginning of the last century. With the Ptolemaic rulers, Egyptian art became Hellenized containing both the traditional Egyptian formulas but modified to please Ptolemaic sensibilities.

The guide is next on to the boy King Tutankhamun and his treasures with a brief rundown of his life and the discovery of his tomb. The objects presented are completely standard choices used time and time again but that is to be expected for this museums guide. In room 4 on the first floor, we have the jewelry vault including lots of magical gems though light on Old Kingdom material the guide is deservedly and thankfully heavy on the Middle Kingdom royal jewelry. The Old Kingdom gold belt of Prince Ptahshepses being a favorite of mine. The jewels of the Middle Kingdom queens and princesses makes up a magnificent treasure within the jewelry collection without equal in quality and delicacy.

From room 4 the visitor will head next to room 2 containing the treasures of the pharaohs found by Pierre Montet at Tanis in the years surrounding the second world war. The tomb Montet found was that of the Pharaoh Pseusunnes I of Dynasty XXI. As luck would have it the tomb also contained the funerary remains and mummies of a number of other kings of the period.

Unlike the childish paraphernalia created to amuse the boy Tutankhamun here at Tanis Mr. Montet found equally stunning material but in this case created for a mature ruler and his class. Found on the mummy of King Pseusennes I was a double string of large lapis lazuli and gold balls. One of the lapis balls has an antique inscription dedicating it to the gods of Assur hundreds of years before the life of King Pseusennes I.

Walking down the long corridor of the first floor a visitor to the museum might be getting a little run down by now but will here find a series of rooms devoted to grave articles and containing some very important finds. In room 12 the viewer will be met with objects from the Valley of Kings tomb of Amenhotep II, and the royal cachette tomb DB 320. Next door room 17 contains the grave hardware from the intact tomb of Sennedjem which contained the funerary remains of twenty members of his family.

A number of rooms are occupied with the Middle Kingdom funerary material including the famous high-quality models of Meketre found undisturbed in a secret chamber of his tomb. The guide moves on to sarcophaguses opening with a brief on the importance the sarcophagus took on in later periods when tombs decorated with magic spells were too expensive for most people to afford. This lead to the coffin texts covering the exterior and interior of coffins.

In room 43 on the first floor opposite the lunette can be found the
grave good of Queen Tiye's parents Yuya and Tuya. When found in 1905 in
the Valley of Kings their tomb was in good condition containing most of
its furnishings and mummies in an excellent state of preservation.
Visitors will find ostraca and papyrus documents in room 24 with an
ostraca of a woman playing a lute. The artist who drew the woman has
viewed her unconventionally from above creating an amazing sketch.

The
viewer moves on now to room 19 which is filled with statuettes of
various gods. At 88cm tall the gold and silver sarcophagus for a falcon
is an eye catcher found among other gorgeous objects in the Dendera
treasure. About a thousand Fayum Roman period portraits have come to
light over the years from a number of cemeteries around Egypt. The
portraits were found on mummies or in some cases next to the mummy
including some being found by Sir Flinders Petrie in his excavations in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The
book ends with a five page look at mummies, in this case the most famous
kings for a total of six mummies for the entire 632 page guide. The
almost total exclusion definitely for me represents a low point for this
publication. The back of the book contains a helpful list of images of
objects and where they can be quickly located both in the guide and the
museum.

Overall the guide is a very fine and useful
thing to have while touring this vast museum and its treasures. There
were minor printing mistakes but nothing of any consequence. Depending
on the visitor or reader this guide may be helpful to those studying the
Karnak cachette statue deposit as a the large amount of that material
is represented here but if mummies are your thing than this read is a
total loss.
Notes:

Many thanks to Derek Wilson who picked this guide up for me on his latest journey to Cairo.

Also sold as;
The Treasures of Ancient Egypt
2003
ISBN 13: 978-88 540-0834-2

Saturday, May 2, 2015

This attractive book opens with the usual rundown on ancient Egyptian history accompanied by a fairly standard set of images and drawings. The author takes the reader to the age of modern Egyptology through the many explorers, but particularly English explorers of the last couple centuries for the volume.

In the days before the second decade of the nineteenth century, Egypt was a dangerous territory to explore resulting in only a few European men who dared the journey, not always with success, some of whom came back home and paid heavily for failure. An early traveler was John Greaves who visited Egypt in the 1630's and who wrote of the Giza pyramids in his 1646 publication,

' Aristotle judged them to be the Works of Tyranny; and Pliny conjectures that they built them, partly out of ostentation, and partly out of State policy, by keeping the people in employment, to divert them from Mutinies and Rebellions. But the true reason depends on higher and more weighty considerations. And this sprang from the Theology of the Egyptians, who believed, that so long as the Body endured, so long the Soul continued with it.'

The value of the materials, particularly in the drawings left by these early explorers capture frequently details that no longer exist in our time including the temple of Armant dismantled for a sugar factory. These adventurers were followed in suit with a continuation of the ancient Roman policy of removing obelisks and everything of perceived value to Europe.

The reader is introduced to William John Bankes and British consul in Egypt Henry Salt, of whom's combined efforts contributed to the decipherment of the hieroglyphs though much not to their credit. Both men would add to the science of Egyptology for its day but ultimately it would be their status as Englishmen with deep pockets that made the material accessible to scholars in Europe and also for their drawings which may be their greatest personal additions still relevant today in the science of Egyptology.

The list follows from one well healed English scholar to another with names of the who's of the educated elites of the day led by letters of the English empire. Fine schooling produced high-quality results from surveys of epigraphy which foresaw their own importance and recorded with amazing fineness,and acute observations knowledge of temples, hieroglyphs, and nuances of things that no longer exist on the ground today. A romantic watercolor by Henry Salt of "Grand Cairo" he painted in1809 is an example of great beauty as is the small image by John Gardiner Wilkinson of an Egyptian chariot.

"The Ptolemaic temple at Antaeopolis had been swept into the Nile in 1821; the small temple of Amenophis III on the island of Elephantine had been dismantled in 1822 to provide building material for a palace of Mohammed Ali Pasha at Aswan; the great site in Middle Egypt of Hermopolis Magna, a center of the great god Toth who was, among other things, the scribe of the gods, was a continuing source of material for building, and other purposes."

Passing through the half-way point the book is a bit of the re-telling of the lords of the empire and not the Egyptian empire. It is here the reader is presented with a lovely two-page color image of the banquet scene held for Nebamun. The famous piece of art from that man's funerary chapel at Luxor among others now in the British Museum.

Not too little could be said for the illustrations adorning the book of which many are rarely seen and a definite interesting strong point for readers. The purpose and expenses of epigraphy laid bare produced monuments where damage or no monument exists today.

In Miss Emelia Edwards we find a champion of the Egyptian landscape and its monuments. At Abu Simbel many years earlier the taking of plaster casts of the northernmost colossus of Rameses II had been completed with not much care into cleaning up the mess properly at that time and as a result, the head was disfigured by chunks of bright plaster which had adhered to the face. This situation was corrected by Miss Edwards and her fellow party members in 1874.

"A scaffolding of spars and oars was at once improvised , and the men delighted as children at play, were soon swarming over the large head, just as the carvers may have swarmed over it in the days when Rameses was king. All they had to do was remove any small lumps [of plaster] that might yet adhere to the surface, and then tint the white patches with coffee.""It took them three afternoons to complete the job, and we were all sorry when it came to an end."

Miss Edwards went on to found the Egypt Exploration Society and with her energies has left a legacy of Egyptian history recovered from its oblivion. Mr. James moves through the early excavators working on behalf of the society including Percy Newberry and Flinders Petrie. From these early days were see the great skills of artists copying the paintings on the tomb walls, like Howard Carter in particular, a fresh face with great talent and still in his teens.

Arriving in Egypt and but 17 years of age Howard Carter's artistic ability was confident and of tremendous value, to the archaeologists whose guidance he worked under though Petrie felt it of little use to train him as an excavator. Carter being trained as an artist realized early on that the mechanical devices used for epigraphy were no substitute to a competent hand. In the end, most will remember him as the man who discovered King Tutankhamun's tomb and not for his amazing works in epigraphical recording at sites like Beni Hassan and Deir El Bahri to name a couple.

I was very much taken by the point of the importance of the epigraphical volumes produced leaving a record of not only fading inscriptions but of ancient Egyptians living, working, playing and in repose. The late Mr. James has brought a history not of excavation but of the memory of those ghosts who linger in their houses of eternity as well as the great rulers and men whose deeds they wanted to be remembered.

"Egypt Revealed" is a fine telling suitable for most but perhaps intended for readers of more mature age though whatever the age Mr. T. G. H. James book is a must have for any Egyptian collection.